


Marius von Raum meets a Friend

by WillowWispFlame



Series: So Sings a Song of Slaughter [10]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast), The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Burns, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Hospitals, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist is a Mechanism, Leitner Books (The Magnus Archives), Medical Inaccuracies, Minor Character Death, Slaughter Avatar Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, The Mechanisms Are Grifter's Bone, The Mechanisms Were The Archivist's College Band, probably I did very little research into actual burn care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:47:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25796890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WillowWispFlame/pseuds/WillowWispFlame
Summary: Kofi and Gerry meet in a hospital. Things go poorly.They meet again in a coffee shop.
Relationships: Marius von Raum & Gerard Keay
Series: So Sings a Song of Slaughter [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1775218
Comments: 25
Kudos: 145
Collections: So Sings a Song of Slaughter





	Marius von Raum meets a Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Saturday night post instead of my usual Friday night. My friends collectively yelled at me to get some sleep instead of work on this. Do not have a sleep schedule like mine.

Kofi was spending a night of his rotation in the burn care ward when it happened. A couple of men were wheeled in from A&E by Dr. Grice and Nurse Lesere, who had already taken care of the initial treatment and bandaging. 

He took a look at their files while keeping an eye on the ward from his station. Second degree burns, all over their bodies. The treatment plan was to change their wrappings, non-stick gauze, twice daily, more if fluids started to seep through. Apply antibacterial ointment twice daily over their entire bodies as well. Give pain medication one hour before changing the wrappings. 

The John Doe was more severely burnt, all of his hair completely gone, his body one big burn. He was still warm to the touch, so Kofi would have to keep a careful eye on his progress.

Meanwhile, Gerard Keay apparently had small eye tattoos dotted over his entire body, and his head from the neck up was untouched from burns. Interestingly, his tattoos were also left bare from damage. It meant that he wouldn’t have to get them redone, at least, but a bit strange. He was clean-shaven, and had shoulder-length black hair. Rather poorly dyed, Kofi thought quietly, but not unattractive. 

Either way, large burns like these would take forever to heal, and would be painful all throughout the healing process. Kofi never envied anyone in the burn ward. 

He checked in on the two periodically, but generally left the men to rest after giving them each an IV and the appropriate monitors. Burns were difficult to recover from, and whatever they had been doing to get burnt this badly must have been exhausting as well. Hopefully they would wake up within the next few days. 

A few hours later, Kofi had set up with a pair of headphones and his phone, one eye on the monitor layout, when he noticed that Lesere had returned. She was standing there at the entrance to the burn ward, staring in with a roll of gauze in her hand. He slid off his headphones and heard something like muffled bells on the very edge of his hearing. He shook his head, and they faded away. Hopefully it wasn’t tinnitus. 

He swept an eye over the computer screen with the monitors for their two current patients pulled up. Neither had any substantial changes, though on a second look their John Doe might have risen in temperature. He probably needed a new saline drip. Kofi got up and joined Lesere, who didn’t notice him joining her as she walked forward to the bedside of Mr. Doe. 

As he approached alongside her, he heard it. 

Their John Doe was whispering intently, chanting almost. Kofi couldn’t catch the words, he was speaking some other language. Was it Spanish? Latin? It was language soup. One word sounded distinctly Polish. Finally, he understood one of the phrases, “the lightless flame.” A rush of heat filled Kofi’s body, like he was standing in front of an open oven door, and he reached out and taped Lesere’s shoulder as she started to raise her hands to check over John Doe’s bandages. He ignored the heat for now, the ringing in his ears starting to rise again. 

“Go let Dr. Grice know that our John Doe burn victim is talking, but delirious. I’ll make sure his wrappings and drip are alright.”

Lesere nodded, moving slowly. Like she was underwater, but she exited the ward with her gauze in tow. 

Kofi frowned as he looked over the temperature readings for the John Doe. His temperature had risen while Lesere had been here. He ghosted the backs of his hands over the patient, feeling the warmth waft up through the light gauze. Had they not let the heat bleed out of his burns before wrapping? No, he probably just had a fever. The saline drip was still a quarter full, but Kofi swapped it out with a cooler bag. The older one was slightly more than lukewarm. 

He gave the man a dose of a painkiller and fever reducer, then went over to Gerard’s bed. No changes here either, he noted, though his forehead was wrinkled as if in thought. He pressed the back of his hand to the man’s forehead, and took a look at his temperature monitor. Still steady, though higher than average. He left for a minute and returned with a damp, wet cloth, which he draped neatly over Gerard’s forehead. As he pulled his hands back, he saw that Gerard’s eyes had opened. 

“Good morning, Mr. Keay,” Kofi said, voice low to avoid disturbing any other patients. “I am Nurse Kofi. You are in the burn care ward at St Thomas Hospital. Keep still,” he ordered as Gerard started to sit up, his hand hovering over the other’s shoulder. “Your burns are still fresh, moving will be painful.”

Gerard sat back with a sigh, closing his eyes against the hospital lights, dimmed for the night but no less harsh. “You wouldn’t happen to know if they picked up a little red leather book with me, would you?”

“Hm,” Kofi said and flicked through the file at the end of the bed. “No, it looks like we only have your lighter and passport. Sorry about that.”

Gerard heaved a heavy sigh, eyes opening halfway to look at Kofi. “Guess that was too much to hope for. I really thought he had it. And my coat?”

“Anything you were wearing was cut off once you made it to A&E,” Kofi said promptly. “We can’t risk injuring a patient further by pulling off an article of clothing. Would have skinned you like a hare with those second degree burns,” he noted. 

Kofi stayed with Gerard, making some easy conversation until he noticed the man’s eyes drooping. “I’ll leave you to rest. Think you’ll be alright keeping Mr. John Doe company for now?” Kofi asked. 

Gerard’s eyes widened, and he turned his head to look at his wardmate. “Oh, Diego is here too,” he finally said. 

Kofi’s interest piqued. “Does Diego have a last name?” 

“Molina. He’s Diego Molina.”

“I’ll add that to his file, thanks for your help. He came in with only the clothes on his back, so we had no way of identifying him.”

“Figures,” Gerard muttered. 

Kofi left to make the changes to Molina’s file. He gave the two men a cursory background lookup, finding to his shock that Gerard had a dropped murder charge and Molina’s file had him with a dropped arson charge. Judging from the burns, maybe that arson charge should not have been dropped as easily as it had. Gerard’s case was more high-profile, apparently he had been accused of murdering and skinning his own mother. Kofi winced at the insensitivity of his previous joke. Hopefully Gerard wouldn’t take it poorly. 

A growing buzz of noise from the direction of the ward caught his attention, and Kofi looked up to see Lesere was back and had approached Molina once again. The ringing had returned, solidifying into the sharp clanging of bells that underlined Molina’s chanting, which had grown in volume as Kofi had been distracted. He swore as he spotted Gerard hobble over before he could move. Gerard moved to stop Lesere from touching Molina’s side. 

Lesere let out an ear splitting scream, cutting clean through the bells and causing Gerard to drop her wrist. 

“Sorry,” he exclaimed. “It’s just, touching that man would have been a really, really bad idea.”

“What is going on here?” Kofi asked, having made it over from his station. He spoke a little louder than normal, trying to speak over the chanting and the bells, which had resumed ringing. Gerard winced, clearly in pain. Lesere looked at Kofi in shock, blinking heavily as if she had forgotten he was here too. 

Kofi looked over his older coworker, not quite sure exactly why she had reacted the way she had to his presence. She looked in shock. Something was going horribly wrong with tonight. He said, “Mr. Keay, you need to go lay back down. Could you help him, Lesere?”

“S-sure,” she said, gaze flicking back to Molina, who was still chanting. She hovered a gentle hand behind Gerard’s back, trying to guide him back to bed, but he stood firm. Watching Kofi.

The oven heat was back in full force. Kofi was sweating under his scrubs. 

The saline bag he had changed over not even an hour before was empty and bloated, more balloon than bag at this point. The bandages on Molina’s body were starting to yellow and crinkle. 

“The heat will kill all three of us,” Gerard said through the pain he must have felt moving around with burns all over his body. “The Slaughter has you, I can see its mark of interest on you already, so it might spare you. But Lesere has no such protection. Especially not here, the Desolation is fed by the loss felt in hospitals.”

Kofi turned away from Molina, and really looked at Gerard. Something like static buzzed in the air around him, hissing like a snake. Static, like on an old television or the radio. It was barely audible through the clanging and chanting, but he could hear slowed beats and the scratch of a tape. It was somewhat musical, he mentally remarked. Like lo-fi music. Another type of curse, singing only to him. The bells must have been the same.

Another wave of heat hit them, making Lesere whimper. Sweat was pouring down each of their faces. It must have stung Gerard horribly below the wrappings. Kofi hoped that they would make it long enough for him to change them, he hated seeing others in pain.

Kofi grimaced. “What do you recommend doing then, Gerard? If we can’t touch him, we can’t make him stop chanting,” he said. 

Gerard said something too quietly to hear clearly above the clanging, letting Kofi only hear every other word. Something about slaughter, nurses, and reluctant killing. He then walked away, out of the ward and to the supply closet that Lesere had been visiting before. The two nurses didn’t even look at each other as they went to follow. Somehow, Gerard guessed the code to unlock it, and pulled out a plastic-wrapped scalpel. 

Lesere, Kofi saw, hesitantly moved to intercept and stop him. Kofi set a hand on her shoulder and gently moved her aside, gesturing silently at the bags of saline that were starting to bubble and boil. She nodded, hugging herself tightly.

The two nurses could only stand and watch as Gerard returned to the other man’s bedside, said something obscured by the volume of the chanting and bells, and plunged the scalpel into Molina’s neck. 

Kofi rested a hand on his own neck in sympathy as the sounds cut out abruptly, replaced by the sizzle of meat as Molina’s body and bandages turned black and flaked away, like paper being turned to ash. By the end, nothing was left. Not even the metal scalpel survived the destruction. All was dust. Kofi moved forward as Gerard reached toward the metal bedpan sitting under the cot, halting him. He nodded towards Gerard’s own bed. Lesere jolted into action, guiding their remaining patient back to rest as Kofi cleaned up the remains off of the bed himself. 

By the time Lesere exited the ward, Kofi had already disposed of the ashes, washed his hands thoroughly, and returned to his post. The other nurse did not even spare him a glance as she returned back to A&E. He took some time, breathing in and out to try and calm himself down. The cool air of the hospital during winter tickled his neck, freezing his sweat. 

Later, Kofi made the missing person report to the police for Molina. It wasn’t even hard to lie about what had happened, the ward had never had a camera after all. Gerard returned to his bed and did not wake from his exhaustive state until days later, when to Kofi’s shock his mother, one Mary Keay, picked him up. What a way to have the charges for your mother’s murder be dropped, Kofi thought, to find out that she was still alive all along. 

[]++++||=======>

Late the next month, nearing the end of January, Kofi entered his favorite cafe and spotted a familiar face sitting at his usual booth. Gerard Keay rose his coffee in Kofi’s direction and took a long sip. He was wearing a long black, leather coat over a grey t-shirt and black jeans. The black eye tattoos on his knuckles stared out from where his hands clutched his drink. He was much more put together than the last time Kofi had seen him, although to be fair he had been covered in gauze like a mummy and wearing a hospital gown. 

Kofi heaved a sigh, and tightly smiled. This might as well be happening. 

He ordered his usual drink and sat across from his ex-patient. The static was back, but softer this time. More comforting. The beat was almost heart-like in rhythm. 

This close, Kofi could spot the edges of the burn scars, not completely healed, peeking above his shirt’s neckline. His blue eyes were heavy, underlined by faint eyebags, like he was not getting enough sleep. His dye-job was neater, at least.

“So,” Kofi said. “Why did you find me, Gerard?”

“Call me Gerry.”

**Author's Note:**

> coffee shop au time
> 
> Yes, in Kofi's mind, Gerard Keay sounds like lo-fi hip hop.


End file.
